Sometimes the world is generous and we receive gifts we cannot hope to repay. Sometimes we can give back. This blog and I have gotten so much from the Wikipedia that I personally donate to it, and I have a donation link on the right sidebar of the blog.
One of my favorite articles is titled: “Kenyan web site names Obama birth hospital.” It was a story of a Kenyan tour company offering an “Obama tour” including his ancestral village. They identify the hospital where the President was born. It was cool until that tour company web site went dark, spoiling the story. To the rescue came the Wayback Machine, a massive collection of over 300 billion archived web pages maintained by the Internet Archive. My story now links to the archived page, and all is back to normal.
In addition to the Wayback Machine, the Internet Archive has a massive collection of scanned books and audio books, even including some books I recorded.
In recognition of the increasing importance of the Internet Archive to my writing as birther web sites go offline and newspaper stories become unavailable, I have added a donation link to the Internet Archive in the sidebar. They are having a fundraising campaign this month and donations in December will be matched 3-1.
It’s a dandy. I find all kinds of old Congressional reports there. It’s really enhanced my capacity for being pedantic and boring.
Whoa! 2 donation buttons! Once again, you’ve totally 1-up’d the birthers, Doc! 😉